Audio Remixer: Deep Dish.

Liner Note Author: David Wild.

Illustrator: Stevie Nicks.

Photographers: Cliff Watts; Karen Williams Johnston; Neal Preston.

With her legacy obscured by tawdry tales of strange drugs in even stranger places, it is easy to forget that Stevie Nicks is a legend first and foremost for her music. Her formidable songwriting genius (she penned many of the most enduring Fleetwood Mac songs), her post-flower child mix of Mists of Avalon and Hollywood decadence, and her uniquely husky vibrato made her one of the planet's biggest rock stars from the mid 1970s through the mid '80s. Both with Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist, she practically lived at the top of the charts for a decade.

CRYSTAL VISIONS: THE VERY BEST OF STEVIE NICKS attempts to be the one and only Nicks compilation, but buyer beware: While the tracklist includes Fleetwood classics such as "Dreams," "Rhiannon," and "Landslide" paired with her own stand-out solo hits, these are not the original Mac versions, but rather rerecordings and live reimaginings. While these takes pale next to the originals, they are still fine readings of undeniably great songs. CRYSTAL VISIONS, thankfully, does not mess around with the solo material, and all of Nicks's chart-toppers are here in their original forms: "Edge of Seventeen," "Stand Back," "If Anyone Falls In Love," "Leather and Lace," and "Stop Dragging My Heart Around."

The collection also highlights some heretofore unheard chestnuts like the killer "Sorcerer" and a ripping live version of Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll," which show that despite the gypsy robes and candlesticks, Nicks could rock with the best of them.

The first American single-disc Stevie Nicks compilation since 1991's Timespace, Reprise's 2007 Crystal Visions: The Very Best of Stevie Nicks bests that previous set even if it falls just short of being truly definitive. The problem area lies in the place where it clearly attempts to distinguish itself from its predecessor: the inclusion of Fleetwood Mac songs. Where Timespace never attempted to explore this territory, Crystal Visions does, but with the exception of "Silver Springs," all of the Mac songs are re-recordings -- "Dreams" is performed with Deep Dish, there's a live version of "Rhiannon," and a version of "Landslide" performed live with the Melbourne Symphony. None of these is necessarily bad, but it's hard not to wish that the original versions of these hits were alongside the original versions of "Edge of Seventeen," "I Can't Wait," "Stand Back," "Talk to Me," "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," and "Leather and Lace," since that would have resulted in a perfect Nicks retrospective. With the live versions, this merely becomes a near-perfect compilation, representing the scope and range of Nicks' career, as a solo artist, as a member of Fleetwood Mac, and as a duet partner. The big songs from all of her career are here, along with some sharply chosen lesser-known tunes -- including a live version of Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll" and "Sorcerer" -- that, along with good annotation by Nicks (and in the case of the deluxe edition, a DVD of 13 of her videos), help paint a full portrait of Nicks' career so well that it makes it all the more obvious that this compilation needs the originals of the Mac songs to be perfect, but as it stands, Crystal Visions is very good (indeed, it's the best Nicks retrospective assembled to date). ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine